By Rashleigh MacFarlane

The government’s £22 billion investment in the controversial “carbon capture” sector has sent mixed messages to campaigners hoping to prevent chemical experiments in St Ives Bay.

Plans by the Canadian company Planetary Technologies to pump magnesium hydroxide into the bay are currently on hold.  South West Water needs more information from the firm before it can apply to the Environment Agency for a change to its discharge permit.

It seems unlikely that any experiments will make progress for at least six months, despite initial assessments suggesting that adding magnesium hydroxide (a laxative) could make seawater more alkaline without harming wildlife.  Planetary Technologies believes this would allow the oceans to absorb more carbon dioxide.

The Water Research Council said in April that the plan was “low risk” but local campaigners do not want to take any risk.  Not only is the long-term effect of altering the chemical balance of the ocean unknown, the principle of “capturing carbon” is controversial because it can be seen as encouraging and subsidising fossil fuel industries.

Now the government’s announcement that it plans to embark on £22 billion projects off Merseyside and Teesside has divided opinion.  While these projects should create jobs, the sums involved dwarf the government’s previous support for Planetary Technologies of only £250,000.

The company had originally planned to have its experiments in St Ives underway by last year.  The news that the Labour government is committed to the principle of carbon capture – but not necessarily in Cornwall – might encourage Planetary Technologies to confine its research to Canada.

The government’s enthusiasm for carbon capture is strongly linked to job creation – the initial promise is of 4,000 jobs, growing eventually to 50,000 in the North West and North East.

The premise involves capturing carbon from an industrial process, transporting it, and storing it – probably undersea.  It has been talked about for years, including by Energy Secretary Ed Miliband when he was previously in government in 2009, but demonstrating the cost-benefit remains elusive.

But the International Energy Agency has warned that even if carbon capture technologies can be made to work, they are not on their own capable of balancing carbon emissions and slowing climate change.